Home > Strategies and Skill Development > Print Strategy Families > Print CuesPrint cue strategies require some form of automatic association between linguistic and print elements, including phoneme/grapheme correspondences, word/spelling correspondences, or punctuation/intonation correspondences. The manner in which the association takes place can vary, as can the degree of emphasis placed upon memorization strategies when children learn to read. Some children may acquire the automatic associations with relatively little explicit use of memorization strategies; others may require drilling and practice. The hypothesized development of these skills is presented in Development Table 43.

Print cue strategies require the development of sensitivity to the features of print and the ability to react to differences in print features (spelling, capitalization, punctuation, formatting) in ways that presuppose that differences in print structure correspond to differences in the linguistic form communicated by the text. They correspond to Reading Foundational Standard 1 from the Common Core State Standards. Print cues are also one of the elements needed for children to meet Reading Foundational Standard 3.

Development Table 43. Hypothesized Development of Print Cue Skills and Strategies

Level

Interpretation

Deliberation

Expression

Preliminary
(oral to word)

Recognizes and names letters of the alphabet and sentence-final punctuation marks.Can sight-read common high-frequency words. Can follow text left to right, line by line. Uses print cues such as spacing to separate words.

Understands and applies the concept that letters and letter sequences (words) correspond to sounds. Understands and applies the concept that capitalization and punctuation are used to delimit statements.

Understands and applies the concept that sentences are units of thought with characteristic intonations (e.g., falling for statements, rising for questions). Understands and applies the distinction between regular and irregular spellings.

Can write simple texts by remembering and reproducing the spellings of common high-frequency words, with appropriate sentence-initial capitalization. Consistently produces correct spellings for highly frequent words.

Basic
(sentence to text)

Correctly interprets elements such as apostrophes that are not pronounced but are intended to disambiguate text. Correctly interprets (and provides appropriate intonation for) intra-sentence punctuation elements such as commas and semicolons.

Understands and applies such concepts as homophone, homonym and homograph to sort out ambiguities in the association between sound and spelling. Understands and applies the concept that punctuation is used to signal how the parts of a complex are related; and that intonation patterns help signal relationships among the parts of a sentence or paragraph.

Produces written texts in which common homophones (their/there etc), contractions and possessives are spelled correctly in context. Consistently writes texts in which use of punctuation marks corresponds to appropriately to intended intonation, even when incorrect.

Understands and applies the concept that texts should be structured into natural thought units, with appropriate pauses between paragraphs and other textual units to allow the reader to absorb and integrate related ideas.

Produces texts in which paragraph boundaries and headings are used appropriately to encourage understanding.

Advanced
(text and context to discourse)

Correctly interprets graphical elements that indicate relationships among and across texts, including quotation marks, underlining, italics, block indents, footnotes, and other orthographic cues.

Understands and applies the concept that text formatting should clearly indicate relationships between a text and other texts that an author has used or discussed.

Produces texts in which quotations, references, and other uses of external material are properly cued by quotation marks, underlining, italics, block indents, footnotes, and other orthographic cues.